Madness and Creativity (Carolyn and Ernest Fay Series in Analytical Psychology)
Language: English
Pages: 136
ISBN: 1603449493
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Analyst and author Ann Belford Ulanov draws on her years of clinical work and reflection to make the point that madness and creativity share a kinship, an insight that shakes both analysand and analyst to the core, reminding us as it does that the suffering places of the human psyche are inextricably—and, often inexplicably—related to the fountains of creativity, service, and even genius. She poses disturbing questions: How do we depend on order, when chaos is a necessary part of existence? What are we to make of evil—both that surrounding us and that within us? Is there a myth of meaning that can contain all the differences that threaten to shatter us?
Ulanov’s insights unfold in conversation with themes in Jung’s Red Book which, according to Jung, present the most important experiences of his life, themes he explicated in his subsequent theories. In words and paintings Jung displays his psychic encounters from1913–1928, describing them as inner images that “burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me.”
Responding to some of Jung’s more fantastic encounters as he illustrated them, Ulanov suggests that our problems and compulsions may show us the path our creativity should take. With Jung she asserts that the multiplicities within and around us are, paradoxically, pieces of a greater whole that can provide healing and unity as, in her words, “every part of us and of our world gets a seat at the table.” Taken from Ulanov’s addresses at the 2012 Fay Lectures in Analytical Psychology, Madness and Creativity stands as a carefully crafted presentation, with many clinical examples of human courage and fulfillment.
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inertia and fed into life, bringing “what is dead and enters into living.” In addition, they know the chaos side of life and are sons of the devil and hence want destruction. But because they are also Jung’s creatures, because he forged them when he fit the devil into human form, they are the “first formations of the unformed gold,” bearing “new arts . . . from the inaccessible treasure chamber, the sun yoke from the egg of the Gods.” Because of this they want their own destruction, and they want
inertia and fed into life, bringing “what is dead and enters into living.” In addition, they know the chaos side of life and are sons of the devil and hence want destruction. But because they are also Jung’s creatures, because he forged them when he fit the devil into human form, they are the “first formations of the unformed gold,” bearing “new arts . . . from the inaccessible treasure chamber, the sun yoke from the egg of the Gods.” Because of this they want their own destruction, and they want
what sweetens. Wallace Stevens’s line says it all in his discovery that imagination rules over prescribed truths, which he rejects: It was when I said, “There is no such thing as the truth,” that the grapes seemed fatter.27 The closer to consciousness the complex is, the more intense its repetitions, as if its message is about to break through, to get into consciousness what had been hiding in the compulsive reenactment. This breakthrough into consciousness shows a first legacy of our
Symington, Neville, and Joan Symington. The Clinical Thinking of Wilfred Bion. New York: Routledge, 1996. Ulanov, Ann Belford. Attacked by Poison Ivy: A Psychological Understanding. York Beach, Maine: Nicolas-Hays, 2001. . “Countertransference and the Self.” In Spiritual Aspects of Clinical Work, 353–92. Einsiedeln, Switz.: Daimon, 1999, reprint 2004. . “Fatness and the Female.” In The Functioning Transcendent: A Study in Analytical Psychology, 33–52. Wilmette, IL: 1996. . The Female
maladies, often chronic and grave and arising from physical origins, get made use of to signal unfelt psychic contents or actions—for example, sorrow that needs to be lamented consciously, not wept out through blistering, weeping sores of the body.12 The complex rules us and traps us in its repetitions; yet the complex tries to communicate something we know and do not know, need to know, to unravel and find symbolic representation for, so we can be freed from acting it out and discover what